


Bring Her Home

by riverchic1998



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Lydia Martin, BAMF Stiles, Gen, M/M, Resurrection, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-15 22:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1320907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverchic1998/pseuds/riverchic1998
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles stares at Derek with wide eyes as he tries to find words. Not being able to find them is odd in the first place, but he’s at the gas station getting an ICEE and not expecting an irritated alpha werewolf to sneak up on him and ask for his help <i>resurrecting his dead sister</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bring Her Home

**Author's Note:**

> The first chapter is for the Full Moon Challenge for March. Uber thanks to my beta and best friend, [Jacy Evans](http://archiveofourown.org/users/jacyevans/pseuds/jacyevans). She writes for the challenge as well and you should absolutely check out her fics.

Stiles stares at Derek with wide eyes as he tries to find words. Not being able to find them is odd in the first place, but he’s at the gas station getting an ICEE and not expecting an irritated alpha werewolf to sneak up on him and ask for his help _resurrecting his dead sister_.

Derek’s expression doesn’t changed; he apparently learned his Resolve Face from Willow Rosenberg. His eyes lock with Stiles’ and his jaw clenches so tightly, Stiles can see the tension in his temples. Normally, Derek hunches over in public, trying to sneak past people without them noticing, a throwaway from his time as a wanted fugitive, but this marks the first time Stiles sees him stand tall with determination.

Cold ice and sticky soda flow over the top of his cup. Stiles snatches his hand back and tries to turn the machine off before the drip tray completely overflows. Sadly, it’s a skill he’s honed over the years after many wars with the ICEE machine. After grabbing napkins and wiping his hand off, Stiles once again tries to find his words.

“You what?”

Okay, so he finds two. Better than none.

“Want you to help me get Laura back,” Derek replies, keeping his voice low in case someone overhears him talking about his dead sister that Stiles is supposed to just magic back to life.

“Dude, I’m trying not to be rude or tactless here, but Laura died a few months ago. She’s buried in your family plot on the edge of the cemetery, remember? The county released her…body…and you buried her there?”

The whole situation is pretty shitty, if he’s honest. Most of the Hale corpses had been burned down to bones, skeletons charred and falling apart. They were identified by dental records. Before she left, Laura Hale made sure that they were all buried, or the ones that had bodies left, on the Hale land in the cemetery that backs up to the forest. 

“I buried Peter, too, and he’s back.”

Stiles snaps a lid on his drink and jams a straw through the top before glaring at Derek. “Yeah, that was a bucket full of fun. I spent a week with mountain ash lining my window because I was terrified that he was going to come after me for lighting him on fire. Thanks for the heads up on that one, Derek.”

He tries to push past Derek so he can pay for his drink and leave, but the alpha grips his arm tightly—not enough to hurt, but just enough to get him to stop walking. Stiles sighs in irritation, but he doesn’t try to get out of Derek’s grip.

“There was no time with the kanima and Gerard.” Derek huffs, dropping drops his hand. 

Part of his brain is telling him to just keep walking up to the register, forget that Derek stalked him into a gas station convenience store, and get on with his summer. Then the other part that thought looking for a dead body in the woods – _Laura’s dead body_ —was a good idea tells him to stay put and hear Derek out because his summer is about to get a little less boring.

Damn it. Stiles plants his feet and gestures for Derek to continue while he drinks his ICEE, teeth clenching around the straw to keep it in place. The alpha makes a face at him, but takes a deep breath.

“I know how he came back. I was there.” Stiles makes a _go on_ motion, still slurping on his drink. He would start tapping his foot if he thought it would get him anywhere. “He used Lydia.”

Stiles immediately chokes. Ice and soda burning through his nostrils is one of the most unpleasant experiences he’s experienced to date. After a round of coughing and wiping his face with his shirt, he turns back to Derek, shocked expression clear on his face. “I’m sorry, what?”

Derek sighs, his nostrils flaring. “I said, he used—”

“No, I heard that,” Stiles snaps. He makes a sharp cutting motion with his hand. “How the hell did he use Lydia? He was dead. As a doornail. Shoved under the floorboards of your burned out home. I don’t know how he could get more dead than that.”

“He was—” Derek cuts himself off as another shopper walks by them to grab a candy bar and bag of chips. Stiles smiles, which comes out more as a grimace since his throat and nose still burn. As she leaves, giving both him and Derek a curious look, Stiles waves, coughing once more. When she moves past them, Derek leans in, dropping his voice. “Can we go somewhere else to talk about this? I’d rather not have this conversation in public.”

“Dude,” Stiles says as he walks toward the check-out, “I’m not the one who did a ninja sneak attack at the drink station. I didn’t want to have this conversation in the first place, let alone where there are cameras and witnesses.”

Before Derek can reply, and Stiles can feel Derek ramping up an epic fit behind him, Stiles reaches in his pocket for his wallet. Mrs. Henderson is at the counter and even though she gives Derek a suspicious look over Stiles’ shoulder, she doesn’t comment on his shadow. Instead, she sticks to safer topics.

“Have a fight with the ICEE machine again?” she asks, pointedly looking at the wet spots on his shirt and the sticky napkin still attached to his ICEE cup. 

He rips it off and shoves it into his pocket, laughing sarcastically, not feeling at all guilty for using the same hand to slap a twenty dollar bill down on the counter, leaving sugary residue behind. “It was a mighty battle, but I remain victorious.”

Her eyebrows rise as she rings up his change. “Are we talking ‘get a mop and wet floor sign’ battle or a ‘rent the street cleaner from the county’ battle?”

He accepts the bills but drops the coins in the change jar to the side, just as he always does. “You’re really funny, Mrs. Henderson. Consider all this extra my donation to the street cleaner fund.”

She returns the smile he gives her with a shake of her head and a wave of her hand, banishing him from the store until he swings by next week. ICEE Tuesday is a thing he and his mother started when he got bored during the summer, and he continues the tradition as often as he can. He isn’t about to let werewolves interfere with his icy soda-y goodness.

Stiles digs the keys from his pocket as he walks up to the Jeep but drops them when a throat clears behind him. He jumps, spinning on his heels and nearly tripping into the Jeep. 

Derek stares at him incredulously. “Did you seriously forget I was here?”

“No,” he replies quickly, picking up his keys from the ground. He can tell that Derek doesn’t believe him. “It was wishful thinking. What do you want?”

“You know what I want, Stiles,” Derek growls, stuffing his hands into his jacket pockets. 

“Yeah, and I don’t know how to help, okay? I’m a one-trick pony with mountain ash, but beyond that, stick me on the sidelines. I’m not a fairy godmother. I don’t make wishes come true.” Stiles unlocks his car and puts the ICEE in the makeshift cup holder he installed with duct tape and PVC pipe. “I would offer to research, but apparently that’s already been done, so I don’t know what you need me for.”

“Lydia only knows bits and pieces of it. She doesn’t remember everything.”

He hops in the Jeep, fully prepared to drive away and forget this ever happened, because Stiles is going to have a peaceful summer, damn it. Scott works so much that he wouldn’t have time to get into shenanigans and Stiles, for once, isn’t going to go look for them. He isn’t.

“I find it hard to believe that our resident genius doesn’t remember something she did a few months ago. It was a pretty big deal.” Stiles starts closing the door of the Jeep when Derek speaks.

“She doesn’t remember because she was being possessed by Peter.”

Stiles slams his hand against the door to stop it from closing as he slowly looks at Derek. For the second time that day, Derek renders him speechless for a solid fifteen seconds. “What?”

“She was possessed by Peter after he bit her. He used her to complete the ritual. She doesn’t remember most of it.”

He blinks and sits back in the seat, rubbing his hand over his face. Unease settles in his stomach. “So all the times she had episodes and everyone wrote it off as PTSD, of her reliving the night of the formal—”

“Hallucinations caused by Peter to mentally wear her down,” Derek confirms with a sour expression.

Stiles leans his head forward on the steering wheel. He should have known better. He does know better. The night at the ice rink when Lydia screamed, claiming she was surrounded by purple flowers and saw a dead man in the ice, was true, but it was all in her head. Fucking Peter…

“You’ve talked to her about it?”

Derek shifts his weight, gaze dropping to the ground for the first time in the conversation. He looks uncomfortable talking about what Peter did to Lydia. “When Jackson would come over for training, he and Isaac and Boyd would fight against each other. Peter showed up one day. They had a fight on the front lawn. That’s how I knew and I thought…”

Stiles nods, making the connections in his own mind. “… that if Peter could be brought back, then maybe Laura could, too.” They’re both silent, the only noise from passing traffic and other drivers filling up gas tanks around them. He swallows, throat clenching tight. “I still don’t know why you need me.”

If Derek looked uncomfortable talking about his creepy uncle, he looks especially uncomfortable now. “Because you’re the only one smart enough to work through this that I trust. You know how to research the supernatural because you did it when Scott was bitten and again with the kanima. You figured out it was Matt.”

Any other time, Stiles would be out of the Jeep and bouncing around, doing a silly dance about Derek admitting Stiles’ superiority, but this is too personal, too raw. This was about Derek’s sister and even though it’s a smaller scale, Stiles understands how it feels having family ripped away too soon.

His throat closes up as he thinks about his mother. Even years later, her memory brings tears to his eyes. Stiles can’t imagine what Derek goes through on a daily basis, no family except for a sociopathic murderer. He really does want to help, but he feels lost just thinking about where to begin with the clusterfuck that is their lives.

“I don’t even know where to start, dude. I mean, I can’t half-ass or guess with any of this, and I’m sure as hell not asking your psycho uncle.”

Derek shakes his head. “Lydia does remember some of what happened, and I remember the very end. That’s something.”

Stiles’ eyebrows go up. Last he heard, Lydia was still pissed at everyone for keeping the supernatural a secret from her. Stiles has kept his distance. “Does Lydia know you’re volunteering her for this?”

Derek doesn’t answer the question - surprise, surprise. He draws himself up again, standing tall with his shoulders back as he glares at Stiles. “Look, can you just ask her what she does remember and then write it down? We just need something to go off of, to get us started. She doesn’t have to write a manual or anything.”

Stiles holds his hands up in surrender. He doesn’t want to push too much. “Fine, but I don’t know what you expect me to get out of her. We haven’t exactly had a heart-to-heart since I drove my Jeep through a building at her ex-boyfriend, who then promptly dicked off to another country.” With a sigh, he reaches back into the Jeep and pulls his ICEE out, wiping the condensation off with his hands. “She hasn’t answered my calls all summer. If she does deem to answer, the most I’m going to get is a polite _fuck off_ and ocular fire, not a play-by-play of a resurrection ritual.”

“Anything will help,” Derek says, finally turning away and walking towards his Camaro. “I’ll come by tonight.”

He splutters around his straw, throat burning yet again at the sudden sting. “What? I was going to do a TV marathon today! I’m behind on tons of television and dad’s working a double shif—” Stiles sighs as he connects the dots. “And that means you can come over and not worry about waking him up. I’ll leave the damn window open since using doors hurts your little werewolf-y brain.”

Stiles knows that Derek hears him, but he’s ignored—not even a glare!—as Derek drives away. He sighs again as he closes his Jeep door.

There goes his summer.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning: I have no idea where I'm going with this. At all. This first chapter has been sitting on my computer for nearly a year. I _hate_ posting WiPs, preferring to finish a fic and post as I edit on a schedule, but I think posting this will give me the kick in the pants I need to get this started. 
> 
> So, if you're like me and wary of reading WiPs with no set chapter release date, sorry. I really will try to get this thing done, or at least get an idea of where the hell I'm going, soon.
> 
> If you have a suggestion or would like to see something in the fic, you can comment here or shoot me an ask on my [tumblr.](http://dream-mancer.tumblr.com/) I'll see if I can work it in! As always, thanks for reading!


End file.
